Chris Dodd: These anti-SOPA websites are abusing their power

posted at 3:40 pm on January 18, 2012 by Tina Korbe

Oh, the hypocrisy! But what did you expect Chris Dodd to say? That anti-SOPA websites are doing all of us a service by standing up for free speech? Not likely. Still, it’s unfailingly astonishing that politicians like Dodd are so capable of saying the things they say without the slightest trace of irony. Nate Nelson of UnitedLiberty.org brings us the story:

The MPAA selected Dodd as its new head lobbyist chairman and CEO last year. Now Dodd is taking aim at Wikipedia, Google, and other websites involved in today’s protest against the SOPA/PIPA internet censorship legislation pending in Congress:

“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.”

Did you get that? The man whom the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) once called one of the most corrupt members of Congress thinks the websites that are protesting SOPA/PIPA today are abusing their power. Speaking for the motion picture industry, he accuses these websites of “skewing the facts … in order to further their corporate interests.” I wonder what Dodd thinks his angle is here? Trust me, I know abuse of power? That Dodd is serving as the commander-in-chief of the Hollywood forces seeking to censor the Internet illustrates how important today’s protest really is. We’re fighting an uphill battle and need all the media attention and popular support we can muster. You can bet it’s no accident that less than a year after the MPAA hired a former five-term senator as its chief executive we’re seeing this heavy-handed anti-piracy legislation that the MPAA so desperately wants.

But wait — maybe Chris Dodd has a highly compelling justification for SOPA that helps us to understand why he thinks websites willing to sacrifice a day of hits to stand against it are so power-abusive? Actually, he does. According to Dodd, we shouldn’t care that the government wants to censor the Internet. After all, communist China does it.

Seriously. That is his justification. From an article in Variety magazine late last year:

Dodd, who assumed his post in March, notes that the idea of blocking sites is by no means unprecedented. Other supporters of the legislation note Internet providers already block criminal content like child pornography. Citing a more controversial practice, Dodd notes “When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn’t do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites.”

While he was in the Senate, Dodd supported net neutrality, and we know from Dodd-Frank, too, that he’s regulation-happy. His support for SOPA comes as no surprise — but the hypocrisy of his criticism of SOPA-critical websites still appalls.

Incidentally, I do disagree with United Liberty’s Nelson on one point. At this point, I think the momentum is actually on the side of the anti-SOPA folks. Granted, if players like Chris Dodd are involved, the pro-SOPA contingent might find an unfair way to push this through — and Harry Reid remains committed to the passage of the Senate equivalent, PIPA — but Darrell Issa has said SOPA won’t make it out of committee until some kind of “consensus” is reached, Marco Rubio recently withdrew his support for PIPA and then, too, those “irresponsible” websites that blacked out today are awakening all kinds of awareness.

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The MPAA selected Dodd as its new head lobbyist chairman and CEO last year.

I caught a quick glimpse of Dodd at the Golden Globes the other night in the audience. Maybe he can do for Hollywood what he did for the housing industry. If 2011 ticket sales are any indication, he’s well on his way.

Dodd is one of the chief architects of the housing bubble and subsequent crash. He ensured our financial collapse, now he is busy ensuring the collapse of our liberties. The man is a traitor to the Untited States. What a DICK!

Without a free press, we would not know exactly what a buffoon Chris Dodd actually is now would we?

Interestingly, my daughters came home from school chatting about the fact that Wikipedia has shut down for the day, etc. in protest. It gave us a chance to talk about what the First Amendment actually says and what it actually means.

Sadly, the fact that the Amendment is a limit upon government power is not part of the curriculum.

When the Congress wanted a gun control law, the elder Dodd who had been a prosecutor at Nuremburg had the Library of Congress translate the NAZI 1932(?) gun control law into English. The Gun Control Act of 1968 is almost a 100% dead lift from the NAZI law.

“Point Two. All industrial, commercial, manufacturing and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit nor leave nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business, under pentalty of the nationalization of their establishment and of any and all of their property.”

Dodd was instrumental in giving us the banking deregulation bill in the late 90’s that led to the the sub-prime crisis and the Finance Reform Act of 2010 that did nothing to regulate the sub-investment grade derivatives, that now stand at more than at the height of the 2008 financial crisis…and we’re supposed to listen to him about abuse of power?

Chris Dodd is the wrong man to say it, but what he says is correct; the sites that are completely blacking out access to the site (craigslist and Wikipedia) are abusing the trust given to them by their users.

Case in point: number of sites taken down by SOPA proponents: 0, so far. number of sites taken down by SOPA opponents: at least 2 major sites (craigslist and Wikipedia).

Chris Dodd is the wrong man to say it, but what he says is correct; the sites that are completely blacking out access to the site (craigslist and Wikipedia) are abusing the trust given to them by their users.

Case in point: number of sites taken down by SOPA proponents: 0, so far. number of sites taken down by SOPA opponents: at least 2 major sites (craigslist and Wikipedia).

novakyu on January 18, 2012 at 4:15 PM

uh… yeah. that’s the point of the blackouts- they are AGAINST sopa. the blackouts symbolize all the content that will be blocked by sopa.

and i for one, love using wikipedia but i am glad they are doing the blackout. i’ve seen many others say that they like the blackouts. i wish more sites would blackout. so i don’t think there’s much of a betrayal of user trust there. btw, if sopa passes, wikipedia may even get blocked…

I know, lets pass a law that says the government decides how a company should be run…. Oh, wait, that’s already been done in Dodd/Frank bill.

And as for telling businesses how to do their job…. I did a little research into the EPA’s new fuel economy standards and I found:

1) the bill is 900 pages long!

2) the passenger vehicle CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) is to be 62 mpg (not 54 as reported)

3) Commercial Vehicles such as Pickups/SUVs must have a CAFE of 44 mpg

I believe that’s the 3rd increase in CAFE that Obama has deemed law without any Congressional input, via EPA’s mandate that CO2 is a pollutant.

Now, think about this. Let take Toyota for example: the Toyota Prius gets 49 mpg. That means that the AVERAGE of all the vehicles they sell will need to get 27% better economy than that. Image how small, complex and expensive of a vehicle we will be driving. And those vehicles will have to be even more fuel efficient that 62mpg to balance Toyota’s luxury car fleet of Lexus.

To accuse these PRIVATE websites of abusing their power because they CHOOSE not to produce content for a day speaks volumes about where your mind is. You seem to have some idea that a PRIVATE individual or concern does not have the right to choose what services they provide and that somehow, the community should dictate those choices. This reveals your fundamental views as being that of a socialist, or a statist.

You say “It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services.” but this is a private organization that has no obligation to deliver any services of any sort to anyone and the people using those services are free to obtain them from other sources. I suppose after all those years in government, the notion that people actually do have the right to choose if they deliver a service and people actually do have a right to choose who they want to deliver that service might be an alien concept to you.

Your attitude in this matter again displays your patronizing, condescending view of the people of this country. These are OUR websites. They are interconnected with OUR communications links. They do not belong to the government and not a single data bit flows over any government infrastructure. There is not one wire you can touch and say it is “THE INTERNET”. Every bit of data on the Internet flows over private networks between private companies who choose what they will and will not deliver and to whom.

Mr. Dodd, the mask slipped a little in your comments. We don’t want our websites controlled by a government that believes the people are subordinate to it. The US government does not rule the people. The President is not a king. I thought you might have learned that lesson when you lost the support of your constituents. You left Americas most hated organization (Congress) for America’s second most hated organization (MPAA). Good luck with that, you tyrannical b4stard (and I say that with all due respect).

Chris Dodd is the wrong man to say it, but what he says is correct; the sites that are completely blacking out access to the site (craigslist and Wikipedia) are abusing the trust given to them by their users.

novakyu on January 18, 2012 at 4:15 PM

Wiki, HotGas and the others sites should not go black for the simple reason that they are places where people gather to discuss things, so it is against reason for them to black out. They however have the right to so whatever they please that is within their corporate charter.

Chris Dodd is the wrong man to say it, but what he says is correct; the sites that are completely blacking out access to the site (craigslist and Wikipedia) are abusing the trust given to them by their users.

Case in point: number of sites taken down by SOPA proponents: 0, so far. number of sites taken down by SOPA opponents: at least 2 major sites (craigslist and Wikipedia).

I’ve noticed that many of my liberal friends oppose SOPA, and are linking on Facebook, with apparent approval, to the protests from Google, Reddit and Wikipedia, among others. It’s interesting that some of these same folks cried out that Citizens United would be the harbinger of corporate hegemony and the end of democracy as we know it, yet they don’t seem to object to corporations using their resources to influence the debate on this issue.

I’d love it if Google and other search engines started blocking “Chris Dodd” — as in, refuse to index any page or document with his name in it so that any search on “Chris Dodd” returned ZERO results. Turn him into an unperson on the Internet and see how he likes THAT.

‘El they’re all hypocrites up there. Whether it’s Dodd and sopa or pbo yelling at all the rich when he himself is one of them or half the gop and whatever they’re trying to sell us, the whole lot of ‘em are hypocrites. We need to start over

Old Chris saw the truth catching up, left (tial between legs) by the Senate by the back door, took the crony job an pontificates on abuse of power. Personifies the libral progressive. He cannot spell integrity.

Wikipedia has a certain amount of dominance (I presume) in its niche of the internet. It hardly has POWER. Power is the capacity to MAKE people do things even against their inclinations and against their will. In a world where if one proves to be unreliable or excessively capricious that users/customer can go else where, the appearance of “POWER” can be very ephermeral.

Wikipedia actually wasn’t down. If you disabled Java in your browser, the redirect wouldn’t happen and you could read whatever page you needed. They also left up their mobile site.

And, the reason SOPA proponents haven’t taken down any websites yet (though some would actually dispute that), is because SOPA isn’t law yet, dummy. I won’t even bother trying to explain the difference between temporary and permanent, or between individual owner choice and force-of-law without due process.

It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today.

(Emphasis mine)

Because to any progressive politician, there are no freedoms which do not flow from government, and may therefore be revoked at any time. The above is no different than

“Real nice liberty you got there. Awful shame if something were to happen to it.”

The CEO of a web-based business is the same as the CEO of any type of business. They are in business to earn a profit. They will risk a small portion of that profit to protect their interests. Deciding to go dark for a day (with several days of fair warning, mind you) in order to raise awareness of a threat to their source of income, is good business. I’m no fan of Google’s own intrusive practices, but they have every right to choose how and when they operate their own sites. A power-grabbing, regulation-happy former Senator calling that abusive is a true piece of political farce.